


Beyond The Walls That Hold Us Here

by Nevanna



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Abuse, Amnesia, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Institutions, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9176341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Five times that Priya was trapped, and one time that she was free.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story fills the "falsely imprisoned" square for Hurt/Comfort Bingo. As the tags imply, some passages focus directly upon the psychiatric abuse and exploitation that Priya suffers in canon.
> 
> Many thanks to Elle for beta reading, and to Fefe Dobson for the gorgeous "Revolution Song," from which I took the title for this fic.

1.

Priya is trapped.

White walls and white coats and whispering voices surround her on all sides. The men and women hide their poison-filled needles behind their backs and their lies behind their smiles. When she tries to tell them that she doesn’t belong here, they shake their heads and tell her that the hospital is a safe place, that there were no guns and no conspiracies, and that the monsters are only trying to help her.

Sometimes she almost believes it, and that scares her more than anything.

She’s been scratching herself, trying to get the poison out, when one of the white coats sits down opposite her. She cries, “You did this, _you did this to me_!” and lunges at him, but when her teeth connect with his hand, she gags at the taste of his skin.

It takes two of the nurses to separate them. “Dr. Kinnard, are you all right?” one of them asks.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and pins her with his stern gaze. “It looks like we have a lot of work ahead of us, don’t we, Priya?”

2.

“Sierra?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Saunders,” Sierra says, shaking her head. Was she thinking about something a moment ago? “You asked me a question, didn’t you?”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Dr. Saunders smiles and unfastens the cuff from Sierra’s wrist. “I just asked you about art class. How was it?”

“I sat next to Echo and Victor while I painted pictures,” Sierra says. There’s another smudge of color on her arm. Sometimes she can’t remember where they came from. “Painting makes me happy. My friends make me happy, too.”

“Would you like to tell me about your pictures?”

“I painted my birds again.” Sierra realizes that those words were a mistake when she feels the dark clouds gather behind her eyes, but she can’t swallow them back. Somewhere inside, she’s letting out little bird-cries, trying to outrun a danger that she can’t name and reach a sky that she can’t see. All that she can do is twist in place. “The bad is all around them,” she whispers, “and it’s stronger and faster than they are, and none of them know how to run…”

The white shape of Dr. Saunders’ coat swims in front of her, and Sierra squeezes her eyes shut.

“Sierra, it’s all right.” She can feel the doctor’s hands on top of hers. “There’s nothing bad or dangerous here. You’re safe.”

“I’ve made you worry.” Dr. Saunders is so nice. Sierra doesn’t want her to worry. She opens her eyes.

“No, you haven’t.” Dr. Saunders lets go of Sierra’s hands. “If there’s ever a time when you _don’t_ feel happy, when you’re frightened or confused, I want you to tell me or your new handler about it, and I promise that we’ll try to help you.”

Sierra can move again, and she feels herself starting to relax, like she’s standing under warm water or holding a friendly hand. She thought at first that she might need to ask for a treatment, but maybe she doesn’t need one, after all. “I know you will.”

3.

The first thing that Linda sees when she walks into the house is a painting, large enough to cover most of one wall, and bursting with a colorful pattern of birds in flight. Her eyes follow the curves of wing and beak, and she isn’t sure how much time passes before Nolan comes up behind her and asks, “Do you like it?”

Linda bites back a yelp of surprise. “The birds…” she whispers as she waits for her heart rate to return to normal.

“What about them?” She can’t understand the apprehension in his voice. Is there anything in the world that would make someone like him nervous? “Do they… make you think of something in particular?”

 _The feeling of a brush in my hand. A young man (was his name Victor? No, that’s not right) with dark hair and soft eyes that smiled at me as he was pulled away. Anger and terror and a blocked doorway…_ Linda shudders. Has she had too much to drink? Maybe that would explain why the entire evening – the party at the mansion across town, the conversations with her date’s colleagues, the startling certainty that she both wanted and _needed_ to go home with him - has felt half like a dream, and half like watching herself onstage in a play. 

A handsome, brilliant, important man wants her all to himself, and she should try to stay in the moment and enjoy it.

She shouldn’t keep glancing from the painting to the door, measuring the distance, thinking about how long it would take her to clear it and run away into the night.

She lets Nolan turn her around to face him, and she accepts his kiss.

4.

Priya knows that she’s trapped in another nightmare. There’s no way that Nolan’s shambling corpse and his horrible voice, the smell of death and the blood on her hands, can be real.

The knowledge doesn’t make her safe. It doesn’t stop her from curling into a tight knot in the corner, doubting her own thoughts and senses, like the sick, terrified, helpless creature that he turned her into a year ago. Ending his life didn’t free her, after all.

She doesn’t know whether the nightmare is more or less awful than the sweet fantasy that came before.

By the time she and her friends are released from the Attic, she understands that the Rossum Corporation twisted the shadows in her mind, her fear and guilt and anger, into her own private, ever-cycling hell. She’s _almost_ certain that she, Victor, and Echo are awake now. The room around them, and the faces of their new allies, seem real enough to her.

Victor – no, _Tony_ – puts his arms around her, and she tells herself not to pull away from his embrace. Part of her waits for his skin to chill and slacken, for his face to turn into a rotting, flaccid ruin. 

Perhaps he understands. She knows that his mind carries its own share of horrors.

In defiance of them all, she tightens her hold.

5.

Priya rises to her feet and leaves the prayer circle without looking back. The smell of the candles, and the rise and fall of the voices, have made her headache worse. Once she’s in the corridor, she rests her head against the wall as she waits for the sensation to pass.

“Sierra, are you all right?”

She turns and fixes the speaker with a glare. “My name is…”

Claire Saunders holds up her hands. “Priya. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Priya sighs. “It’s not like you ever really got to know any of us outside of our happy little zombie states.”

“You weren’t always happy,” Claire says softly. 

“You probably know more about Sierra than I do.”

“I could try to fill in some of the blanks for you,” Claire offers. “I think you’ll find that we have a few things in common.”

 _Were you also drugged into psychosis and locked away?_ “We were both used,” Priya says. “Probably by similar people. I know that much.” She doesn’t know _everything_ about Whiskey, about how she became Claire, or about what Rossum did to both of them, but she’s heard just enough of the story to realize that Claire isn’t wrong: someone tried to break them both, and the Dollhouse pretended to fix them. 

“And we both thought we could escape this place.” Claire gestures at their surroundings. “Some of our friends still think so.”

“They’re welcome to try, if they want their brains scrambled or their arms torn off.” Every time somebody new is brought underground, the stories of the world outside the Dollhouse have gotten more frightening. They’re almost more terrifying than the thought of dying down here.

“Do you think that Safe Haven exists?” Claire asks.

“I’ve heard too many people drone on about how our minds will be safe once we find it,” Priya says. “It sounds just like any other fantasy: too good to be true.” Like the dream that she and Tony would be together forever, or that Echo could truly succeed in taking down Rossum. “If it were real, would you try to find it?”

“Every time I try to imagine it, I remember that I’m needed here… and then I wonder if that’s just part of my program, and I’m _supposed_ to think it,” Claire admits. “I guess there are different ways to be trapped.”

6.

Soil has gathered under Priya’s fingernails and smudged her clothes, and the sun warms her back. She helped to plant the tomatoes, carrots, peas, and garlic, and it’s her turn to help make sure that they can grow. She adjusts her grip on a particularly stubborn handful of weeds and pulls them free. 

She likes the idea of relying less and less upon supplies from the world outside Safe Haven, and more upon whatever they can grow in this garden. That world hasn’t gotten any less dangerous, and sometimes Priya balances carefully on the edge of despair at the thought that she might never leave this place.

Echo sometimes reminds her not to stop hoping, for her son’s sake if not for her own. Priya still hasn’t decided when she’s going to tell him about the father whose name he shares, about the technology that ended the world but brought his parents together, or about the people who didn’t make it to Safe Haven, like her own parents, and Claire, and Topher. She _does_ plan to see that little Tony – or T, as he likes to be called – learns how to garden, how to cook, how to fight, and how to find his way home. 

And even if it’s not necessary for his survival, she’ll keep showing him how to draw: not only birds, but trees and flowers and their loved ones’ faces, and all of the fantasies and monsters that take shape within his mind.

He has a childhood untouched by dangerous tech, and she has her own memories, people she can trust, and a sky that she can see every day. She no longer takes those things for granted, but nor does she spend every moment fearing that they’ll be taken away. There are a lot of different ways to be trapped, and almost as many ways to be free.

She smiles and digs her hands into the earth again.


End file.
